A hearty sandwich

The other day we were watching our favorite travel channel TV show: Bizarre Foods. We love Andrew Zimmern’s humor and enjoy watching him explore curious food. Anyway, on that episode he showed culinary students how to cook heart. Everyone then proceeded to taste heart and comment on how good and unlike any other offal it was.

Next think I know, BF comes home from grocery shopping with lamb hearts. Now BF never willingly eats offal, not even liver. I got him to eat tongue, but that hardly count as offal: that is a voluntary muscle just as any other meat cut. So you can imagine my surprise. Well I quickly ventured online and found a recipe to cook heart. It suggested marinating the meat and then grilling it. I turned it into a pretty great sandwich.

Heart is quite different from other offal, in that it is much more meaty. And in this case it had a distinct lamb-y taste. It is also a quite bloody meat and I found I only needed small amounts to feel full. Anyway, as Andrew Zimmern would say, if it looks good, eat it. And this sandwich did look good!

Start by marinating the meat. Prepare the marinade using the juices and grated zest of the lemon, the minced garlic clove, 1 spoon of oil and a pinch of salt. Thinly slice the heart and put it in the marinade and let rest for 1/2 an hour and up to 24 hours.

Prepare the zucchini by slicing it and sauteing it with the remaining oil until soft and completely cooked. Season with salt and pepper.

Warm up a griddle on the stove until piping hot. Grill the bread to make it toasty. Grill the heart slices for a couple of minutes on each side. Season with salt and pepper.

You ALMOST have me convinced to try it. My husband is a great fan of pretty much EVERYTHING meat, I didn’t grow up like that and over the years have learned to love some, but I have never warmed up to anything like this easily. I’ll have to show this to him, though, he’ll be all over it.

This is very meaty meat. If heart has a flaw is that it is almost too meaty for my taste (I ended up going vegetarian for the next couple of days). But a real meat lover should try it! You can add it to the next grilling party!